My performance?

[dylskee]

I just started folding again and it's been running since Sunday and I was wondering what to expect for points from my i7 @4100MHz? I'm running VMware/Ubuntu. I've had a few hiccups along the way so my points don't really reflect 48 hours of straight folding. I had to lower my overclock 100MHz to get it stable and when I got home from work today it seems it was stuck since this morning. Said something like autosending complete but the timestamp was from this morning and it wasn't folding at the time. So I shut it down and restarted and it seemed to fire up without a problem. Just wondering if I'm optimized for my setup, I remember folding back in 05 and I used to fold BigWU or something like that? WUs that gave you more points, not sure if that's an issue nowadays or not.

Should I fold my GPUs in Ubuntu or should I fold them in windows? Still a little foggy on the GPU end of things, I'm hoping to get them folding by this weekend. Thanks for any help and advice, much appreciated!

 

[NV]

Your best friend: Sydney's guide to Folding under Linux

That PPD seems almost normal. Kinda hard to tell with you having just started and having a couple issues. For reference my i7 at 3.8 was getting about 11-12k PPD with the normal 8 core SMP. Make sure you're running all 8 cores, that's the -smp 8 flag. You'll be able to tell whether you're up to expected capacity in a day or two, I imagine.

You do want to get those GPUs folding under wine, Sydney's guide addresses that very well.

With the i7 you'll want to do the -bigadv workunits. Don't listen to Stanford, your 4 physical and 8 logical cores are more than up to the task. You use this drop-in executable, which is one little bit about the program that I could never find (thanks sneakysnowman!) and get a passkey from Stanford which you can read about here. Once you have the passkey you can fold 10 normal smp units and then receive huge bonus points from folding the -bigadv units. With those your CPU will get more like 25k PPD.

Good luck, hope everything goes smoothly. If you have any questions, just ask!

 

[ChasR]

On the i7, you will probably find stable folding OC to be lower than 4.0 GHz. Hung clients are a classic symptom of just a bit too much OC.
If you must run Windows, run the GPU(s) in windows, there is no performance penalty for doing so. If you want to run native Linux, then by all means, run the GPUs under wine. THe performance of Windows/VMware/Linux SMP + GPU is very close to Native Linux SMP + wine GPU. WIndows allows higher shader clocks on the GPUs which makes up for the 3% or so VM overhead. If you run multiple GPUs, the Windows approach will outpoint native Linux due to higher gpu production.

 

[dylskee]

Your best friend: Sydney's guide to Folding under Linux

That PPD seems almost normal. Kinda hard to tell with you having just started and having a couple issues. For reference my i7 at 3.8 was getting about 11-12k PPD with the normal 8 core SMP. Make sure you're running all 8 cores, that's the -smp 8 flag. You'll be able to tell whether you're up to expected capacity in a day or two, I imagine.

You do want to get those GPUs folding under wine, Sydney's guide addresses that very well.

With the i7 you'll want to do the -bigadv workunits. Don't listen to Stanford, your 4 physical and 8 logical cores are more than up to the task. You use this drop-in executable, which is one little bit about the program that I could never find (thanks sneakysnowman!) and get a passkey from Stanford which you can read about here. Once you have the passkey you can fold 10 normal smp units and then receive huge bonus points from folding the -bigadv units. With those your CPU will get more like 25k PPD.

Good luck, hope everything goes smoothly. If you have any questions, just ask!

Thanks for the links NV, the drop in exe you linked seems to be garbled. And I got my passkey so I hope to be folding bigadv units soon!

On the i7, you will probably find stable folding OC to be lower than 4.0 GHz. Hung clients are a classic symptom of just a bit too much OC.
If you must run Windows, run the GPU(s) in windows, there is no performance penalty for doing so. If you want to run native Linux, then by all means, run the GPUs under wine. THe performance of Windows/VMware/Linux SMP + GPU is very close to Native Linux SMP + wine GPU. WIndows allows higher shader clocks on the GPUs which makes up for the 3% or so VM overhead. If you run multiple GPUs, the Windows approach will outpoint native Linux due to higher gpu production.

I still seem to be having some stability issues, It took nearly 24 hours to do a WU! And when I got home from work today it was just sitting at 26% for a couple of hours so I upped my vcore a couple notches and hope the does the trick. My system was prime stable at these settings so I figured it would be stable for folding? I will lower my overclock tomorrow if I'm still having trouble.

I am running two GPUs so should I follow THIS GUIDE to do so?

 

[Sydney]

On the i7, you will probably find stable folding OC to be lower than 4.0 GHz. Hung clients are a classic symptom of just a bit too much OC.
If you must run Windows, run the GPU(s) in windows, there is no performance penalty for doing so. If you want to run native Linux, then by all means, run the GPUs under wine. THe performance of Windows/VMware/Linux SMP + GPU is very close to Native Linux SMP + wine GPU. WIndows allows higher shader clocks on the GPUs which makes up for the 3% or so VM overhead. If you run multiple GPUs, the Windows approach will outpoint native Linux due to higher gpu production.

There is no difference between shaders under Linux and Windows. I'm running my GTX at 1500 shader and GT at 1800 shader under Linux, which is the maximum I could get them stable.

I suppose you might be talking about the fact that you can't directly overclock the shaders in Linux, that you need to overclock the core and then the shaders will overclock accordingly. Well, that's why we have BIOS flashing

Anyway, the ONLY performance loss in running native Linux vs Windows with a Linux VM is the small CPU time that is required to translate the Direct3D calls into OpenGL by WINE. That very point loss might however, be non-existant because a typical Linux distro is much lighter than a windows operating system.

I think I just might set up folding and a VM in Windows just to prove my point and shut ChasR up for good (well, or me), he just won't believe that the GPU production with WINE is equal to a native windows client

Thanks for the links NV, the drop in exe you linked seems to be garbled. And I got my passkey so I hope to be folding bigadv units soon!




I still seem to be having some stability issues, It took nearly 24 hours to do a WU! And when I got home from work today it was just sitting at 26% for a couple of hours so I upped my vcore a couple notches and hope the does the trick. My system was prime stable at these settings so I figured it would be stable for folding? I will lower my overclock tomorrow if I'm still having trouble.

I am running two GPUs so should I follow THIS GUIDE to do so?

If you plan on going the native Linux route, my guide covers multiple GPU.

But ChasR is technically correct. The more GPUs, the better it is to use a native Windows client, THEORETICALLY, since the point difference might be negligible.

 

[dylskee]

If you plan on going the native Linux route, my guide covers multiple GPU.

But ChasR is technically correct. The more GPUs, the better it is to use a native Windows client, THEORETICALLY, since the point difference might be negligible.

I read through your guide a little last night and if I go th Linux route I'll definitely use that guide.

 

[ChasR]

Sydney is a great proponent of Linux and he's worked hard to make it easy for the even the rawest noobs. None the less, the installation process for Linux GPU folding is tedious and I think it's inarguably more difficult to get going than the Windows client. Personally I draw the line a bit before I get to flashing the bios on the card(s). That is, however, the only way Native Linux SMP + wine GPU is faster than Win/VM/Linux + GPU and even then by less than 3%. I do have both and despite my giving Sydney proof that I'm right, he refuses to believe me. It's sort of like talking to a rock when it comes to showing him the light on this.

 

[Sydney]

Sydney is a great proponent of Linux and he's worked hard to make it easy for the even the rawest noobs. None the less, the installation process for Linux GPU folding is tedious and I think it's inarguably more difficult to get going than the Windows client. Personally I draw the line a bit before I get to flashing the bios on the card(s). That is, however, the only way Native Linux SMP + wine GPU is faster than Win/VM/Linux + GPU and even then by less than 3%. I do have both and despite my giving Sydney proof that I'm right, he refuses to believe me. It's sort of like talking to a rock when it comes to showing him the light on this.

Windows solution faster than Linux solution?

NEVAAARR!1!!1!!eleven!!1

 

[dylskee]

How quickly should it begin to fold after finishing a WU? I finished one at 8:41 PM and the results were successfully sent but I got a warning that it could not delete all the work unit files and it's been sitting ever since. Should I try to manually delete the WU?

 

[ChasR]

It takes a while to upload a 48MB file. If you delete it now you'll lose all progress.

 

[ihrsetrdr]

How quickly should it begin to fold after finishing a WU? I finished one at 8:41 PM and the results were successfully sent but I got a warning that it could not delete all the work unit files and it's been sitting ever since. Should I try to manually delete the WU?

A person can actually lose their mind by paying too close attention to the progress of work units.






...on the other hand, a person can lose their bigadv bonus[like me] by not paying close enough attention.

 

[dylskee]

I have something going on here, I keep getting "Cannot connect to work server" and "Could not transmit unit 05 to work server, 2 failed uploads of this unit." And I see the Could not connect to work server retrying using alternative port a few times through out this WU. Is this a problem on my end or theirs? I don't seem to be getting much accomplished since i started.

 

[AmbientFiction]

Try shutting down client and Vm then reconnecting as long as your server isn't listed as being down on this list

Server Stats

 

[ChasR]

Server Status:
http://fah-web.stanford.edu/serverstat.html

Connectivity test is stickied.

 

[dylskee]

Well this is day number two now that I'm not getting any points! Tried shutting the client down and restarting but doesn't seem like that helped.

 

[dylskee]

Can someone tell me how to get my work units in? "Sent 0 of 3 completed work units to the server, closed connections." That's all I seem to be fetting the past couple days now, is there a way to manually send them?

 

[Wicked_Pixie]

Can someone tell me how to get my work units in? "Sent 0 of 3 completed work units to the server, closed connections." That's all I seem to be fetting the past couple days now, is there a way to manually send them?

Use "-send all" (without quotations) flag when you re-start the client.

 

[ChasR]

The issue here is why doesn't it send. It connects to send as seen in the log, but doesn't complete the send. I think you either have a connection timeout or bandwidth limit with your ISP. 48 MB uploads aren't the norm for ISPs and I'm guessing yours is killing the connection before the send is complete. What kind of connection do you have? It might not be the ISP, but I think your connection issue is related to the size and time it takes to upload. Maybe you should ditch the -bigadv flag and see if it will upload a normal A2 WU, 20 MB.

 

[dylskee]

The issue here is why doesn't it send. It connects to send as seen in the log, but doesn't complete the send. I think you either have a connection timeout or bandwidth limit with your ISP. 48 MB uploads aren't the norm for ISPs and I'm guessing yours is killing the connection before the send is complete. What kind of connection do you have? It might not be the ISP, but I think your connection issue is related to the size and time it takes to upload. Maybe you should ditch the -bigadv flag and see if it will upload a normal A2 WU, 20 MB.

Thanks for the reply ChasR, I've got cable with a 5Mbps down and 1Mbps up. How do I get rid of the -bigadv flag, I think that would be a good place to start. I have already uploaded a couple already though so I don't know why I'm having issues now.

 

[dylskee]

Use "-send all" (without quotations) flag when you re-start the client.

Thanks Wicked_Pixie!